Jihadist rebels embattled against Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad have reportedly come into possession of super high-powered anti-tank weaponry supplied by the United States.

RT Images of rebels equipped with heavy arms have begun to circulate, and at least one news site has claimed that the source responsible is the US government who is supplying advanced US weapons, including armor-piercing, optically-guided BGM-71 TOW missiles. Late last month, the Wall Street Journal reported that Senior US officials said their goal is to provide assistance to Syrian rebels, not just as a ‘counterweight’ to the Assad regime, but also to extremist al-Qaeda elements of the opposition.

Gregory III
And the Melkite Greek Catholic Patriarch, Gregory III, says that over 1,000 Syrian Christians have been killed, and 450,000 displaced. Where are the world’s “human rights” organizations?

“12 killed in attacks against church in southern Syria,” from Xinhua, December 22 (thanks to Pamela Geller):

DAMASCUS, Dec. 21 (Xinhua) — Syria’s armed rebels fired multiple mortar shells on a church in Syria’s southern province of Daraa, killing 12 people and injuring many others, the pro- government al-Ekhbarieh TV reported.The shells landed at the old Church in Daraa while the Church volunteers were distributing charity aid to locals, the report said.

The incident came as the Syrian Christians, who make up 10 percent in the country’s Sunni-majority population, have felt the pain of the protracted crisis, as their population has been subject to attacks by the radical rebels. The latest incident took place earlier this month, when radical jihadists fully controlled Syria’s Christian town of Maaloula, north of the capital Damascus.

Gregory III Laham, Patriarch of the Church of Antioch and all East, told Xinhua in an interview that Syria’s long-term crisis has displaced more than 450,000 Christian Syrians and killed more than a thousand of them.

Earlier in the day, five people were killed in a mortar attack against the Hamadanyeh district of the northern province of Aleppo, according to the mainstream media.

Police: Bat Yam Bus Bomb Was a Terror Attack

Police said that the explosion on the number 240 bus from Bnai Brak to Bat Yam was set off by Arab terrorists.

Passengers on a bus in Bat Yam where a bomb exploded Sunday afternoon attributed the fact that no one was killed to a miracle. Police said that based on their initial investigation, the explosion on the number 240 bus from Bnai Brak to Bat Yam was due to a bomb placed by Arab terrorists.

One person – a police bomb squad officer – was injured as he approached a suspiciouspackage on the bus. A spokesperson for the Dan Bus Company said that there twelve passengers on the bus when a passenger alerted the driverthat there was a suspicious object on board. The object was in a bag, which one of the passengers opened. Noticing there were wires coming out of the bag, the passenger alerted the driver, who immediately evacuated the passengers.

Witnesses said that there was a gaping hole in the back third of the bus, indicating that the explosive device was a large one. “Imagine if the bus had been full, or if the driver had not taken everyone off the bus, or if everyone had ignored the bag,” said one witness. “It was a miracle everyone was saved.”

The police officer who was hurt when the bomb went off was lightly injured, police said. The device exploded as he went on the bus, and he was injured by flying shrapnel which hit him as was entering the bus.

The driver of the bus, Michael Yoger, told reporters that “a woman told me that there was an unattended bag on the bus. I asked who it belonged to, but no one answered, and when I realized that it had just been left there I took all the passengers off the bus. Within ten minutes the bomb exploded.

“The bag was large,” said Yoger. “One of the passengers opened it and saw wires. It was definitely a miracle that we were all saved.”

Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan denounced “international groups” and “dark alliances” on Saturday for entangling Turkey in a corruption scandal that has exposed deep rifts between him and a US-based Muslim cleric who helped him rise to power.
Sixteen people, including the sons of two ministers and the head of state-owned Halkbank, were formally arrested on Saturday, local media said, in a corruption inquiry that Erdogan has called a “dirty operation” to undermine his rule.The Turkish leader raised the stakes by accusing unnamed foreign ambassadors of “provocative actions.” Some pro-government newspapers had accused the US envoy of encouraging the move against Halkbank – a charge denied by the embassy.

The rejection of Israel is not a natural component of leftist dogma. It’s just that for the past decade, the smart money and the rising power on the Left has been with those who oppose Israel’s existence as a strong, independent Jewish state.While the ASA and its comrades are on the fringes of academia, they are not fringe voices on the Left. The Left has embraced the cause of Israel’s destruction.

At least 1,000 people were killed in Bangui, the capital of the Central African Republic, in just two days of violence earlier this month, according to Amnesty International. The figure is significantly higher than an earlier UN estimate. (via JW)

They really meant to hit the ministry of defence, not the hospital at all, you see. And now they will pay blood money, in accord with Sharia provisions, for they are “preachers of Sharia and not frauds.”

Narendra Modi today gave a clarion call for Ram Rajya from the civilisational heartland of India, telling denizens of Varanasi that this was the vision of their ancestors, which they had the qualities to make real. Enchanting a mammoth gathering in this historic city at the Vijay Shanknaad Rally, he spared neither person nor party as he launched the Bharatiya Janata Party’s countdown for the general election of 2014 with a pronounced emphasis on the rise of social underdogs as the yardstick to measure the progress of the nation.

Carefully calibrating his combativeness towards the Congress and the UPA, and the family that has presided over the destiny of the nation for 45 years, Narendra Modi said it is insulting that some people think Uttar Pradesh is important to form the Government (at the Centre). Should a State be used only to harvest MPs and form Governments, he asked, and replied, “My own thinking is much larger. I say that India needs UP for stability, because we cannot progress as a country if UP does not progress”.

Uttar Pradesh, he indirectly chastised the Congress, is not a playground for politics; the people here have the energy to galvanise the nation. Your ancestors, he told his rapturous audience, dreamt of Ram Rajya, it is your heritage (virasat); the difficulty is only because the State has not elected the right leaders or the right Government. The day this changes, he promised, the energy and drive of the people will take the nation to new high.

Striking a personal and emotional rapport with the people, Narendra Modi said he had come from the land of Somnath (Shiva) to take the blessings of Baba Vishwanath (Mahadev). Noting the excitement of the gathering, he said he was probably witnessing such atmospherics before elections for the first time; people are so keen, so aggressive, to throw out the regime in Delhi. In 2014, it is the people and not political parties that will fight the election.

Narendra Modi addressing Vijay Shankhnaad Rally in Varanasi, UP

Standing in the eternal city, he said one cannot talk of India without mentioning the Ganga, as India is incomplete without the Ganga. It may be just a river for some, but for us she is a Mother. The eternal significance of Varanasi, as the devout know, is that it is here that the Ganga bends back north towards its Himalayan source. Naturally, Narendra Modi lambasted the Congress for its inability to clean the river despite umpteen schemes, endless committees and wasted budgets, which have not even been able to stem the steady decline of the river. He challenged the Prime Minister to submit details of the thousands of crores spent on the pretext of the Ganga from the public exchequer from the reign of Rajiv Gandhi. Citizens were cheated in the name of the Ganga, so the nation should know who got the money; he asked if such people should be tasked with governing the nation.

Uttar Pradesh, he said to the delight of his listeners, is not responsible for the pollution of the Ganga. Until Delhi and Lucknow are purged (of the respective Governments) there can be no purity in the Ganga. Pro-Congress persons, he mused, sometimes ask him what he will do if he comes to power in Delhi. The answer, he said, is to come to Gujarat and see the Sabarmati; it was once a dirty stream, but today the pure waters of the Narmada flow in it, and if the Sabarmati can be cleaned and made pure again, so can the Ganga; this will purify not just the river but the whole of Hindustan. The BJP, he thundered, does not make empty promises, “we have come with intent, irada not vada. The country is fed up of promises, it now wants its wishes fulfilled”.

Continuing the policy of emphasizing the importance of agriculture and farmers in national life, the BJP Prime Ministerial candidate said that under the leadership of Lal Bahadur Shastri, the farmer was inspired and filled the granaries of the nation. The UP farmer alone had the ability to feed all of Europe, but today governance is so poor that the nation is limping and the farmer is starving. It breaks the heart of our hardworking farmer when he sees his rice rotting on railway platforms. The farmer does not just feed the people, he feeds the animal population as well. But the Government callously lets the grain rot and then sells it to alcohol producers at a pittance of 0.80/quintal. This, he charged, is the reason why the Government refused the advice of the Supreme Court to distribute the excess grain among the poor; is this why our farmer toils, he lamented.

The Congress and similar parties remember the poor only at election time, just as students remember god at the time of examination. They think that once they get votes they are through for another five years; they have no love or respect for the poor, and cannot understand the grim struggle of their lives. One family, he charged, which has been in power for 45 years, is responsible for the plight of the nation. ‘One family has ruined the nation’.

The very mentality is flawed. Striking a powerful rapport with the audience, he said, “we don’t have to go and look for poverty the way they do; our childhood was in poverty” (alluding to Rahul Gandhi’s televised visits to the huts of the poor). One leader, he pointed out, said, “chai bechne wala” (wants to be PM). Expressing astonishment at the attitude, he countered that if the nation wants, a farm labourer or a shoe shine boy can lead the nation. Taking a dig at the corruption bedeviling the nation, he said to thunderous applause, “my upbringing, my sanskars say that I can sell tea but not the nation”. Only those who mock the poor can say that poverty is a state of mind, he continued. Those whose children are crying of hunger know what poverty is. Young children, he said, alluding to his own childhood, work to feed their parents; the nation should throw out leaders who do not understand this. Addressing the older generation, he asked if parents who have struggled in life want their children and grandchildren to suffer and struggle in the same way.

Just before he came to Varanasi, he said, a Muslim wrote to him saying that he was a resident of Kashi and since he (Modi) was coming to the city, could he make a mention in his speech of the difficulty of sleeping in the weaver’s bastis because power looms ran the whole night? The Banarsi sari, Modi responded, drape our ladies and can make our economy, yet such a huge industry has been ruined due to lack of vision. In Surat, he said, the power looms were silenced by upgrading the whole sector to soundless machines. This could also be done in Varanasi so that the huge employment potential of the sector engages the youth and puts an end to outward migration for jobs. The Government of India, however, imports yarn from China and ignores Varanasi.

BJP president Rajnath Singh gave a combative speech to huge cheers from the audience, and lauded the history and civilisational luminosity of Varanasi as a land associated with the Buddha (nearby Sarnath); Tulsidas, Kabir, Raidas, Pandit Ravi Shankar, Ustad Bismillah Khan and Madan Mohan Malaviya. Varanasi MP Murli Manohar Joshi made a pointed attack on the state of our national security, particularly the danger from China, Pakistan, and more recently, the shameful insult to a woman diplomat abroad. The UPA, he charged, failed to protect women at home and now it has failed to protect our women overseas.

The protracted stand-off over Devyani Khobragade has led many in India’s security establishment to consider that the real reason for the arrest and humiliation of the diplomat could be India’s adamant detention of the floating armoury, MV Seaman Guard Ohio, on October 11 this year, and the continued incarceration of the 35 crew members, including Captain Dudnik Valentyn. The diplomatic confrontation in the matter could well be intended to end in an IC-814 style exchange.

MV Seaman Guard Ohio, owned by US-based Arab billionaire Samir Farajallah’s firm AdvanFort, was detected moving in Indian waters under the Sierra Leone flag and detained at Tuticorin port in Tamil Nadu. Indian officers recovered 35 assault rifles and 5,724 rounds of ammunition from the vessel. The National Investigation Agency (NIA) is trying to establish if these armaments were intended for the dormant LTTE extremists or Islamic terrorist groups in south India.

Experts note that due to its strategic importance, the intelligence agencies of many countries have established a presence in south India. Farajallah, a UAE national who is close to the Pentagon, lives near the White House, which makes Indian authorities suspect that the US administration was directly linked to the episode. He had previously helped US companies to sell arms in strife-torn nations, such as Libya, Iraq and Afghanistan.

AdvanFort has branches in Dubai and London and provides maritime security and armed security personnel; the seized vessel is part of its counter-piracy fleet. Both AdvanFort and the crew have failed to explain the presence of arms in their cargo. The ship had valid documents to hold weapons but none to authorise it to sail in Indian waters. It docked at Kochi on September 9 because it ran out of fuel and to escape a cyclone, and illegally purchased some diesel with the help of local agents.

The crew and guards were officially arrested on October 18; they included US, UK, Estonia and Ukraine nationals. Cases have been registered under the Arms Act of 1956, Essential Commodities Act 1955 and Motor Spirit and High Speed Diesel (Regulation of Supply, Distribution and Prevention of Malpractices), Order 2005. The Central Industrial Security Force was directed to take custody of the vessel.

Although, there is no exact tit-for-tat sequence in the Devyani case, which broke out much earlier, and possibly contained elements of personal ambition of Sangeeta Richards to settle in the US, there can be no doubt that back channel diplomacy to release the entire staff abroad the vessel was going on since October itself. The US consulate in Chennai would also have been aware of how Indian investigations were proceeding and the likely legal developments in the case, particularly after the nation-wide furore over the Italian marines who skipped parole, but returned under pressure, and are now out on bail. The Richards family was evacuated on December 10; Khobragade was arrested on December 12.

On December 18, the Madurai bench of the Madras High Court dismissed the bail application of all 35 crew members as the Government argued that three persons were yet to be arrested in the case and the investigation was at a crucial stage. The crew claimed that the vessel was 19 nautical miles off the Indian coast, beyond India’s territorial jurisdiction. Washington became anxious when the American media whipped up sentiment over the arrests. William Watson, president of AdvanFort, said in an interview to FoxNews, “These guys are decorated military veterans. They’re brave, honest men who spend months away from their families to protect ships from pirates and this is how they’re being treated”. He said the arms and ammunition were to protect commercial ships from piracy.

Watson claimed that when the ship found itself low on fuel, it requested the Indian authorities permission to dock and buy fuel, which was refused. But following a cyclone scare, the crew docked in Kochi and went to an agent to buy enough fuel to reach another port in either Sri Lanka or Maldives. But when it entered Tamil Nadu waters, the coast guard forced it to come into port. At first, 33 members of the crew were arrested, and two days later, the chief engineer (who attempted suicide) and the captain, both Ukrainian nationals. With the crew still in jail and Christmas round the corner, the US State Department may be trying to force the Indian Government to withdraw the cases and release the men, as it did with the three dreaded terrorists demanded by the Taliban at Kandahar, in return for charges being dropped against Devyani Khobragade and her safe return back home.

BJP’s Prime Ministerial candidate Narendra Modi’s Maha Garjana Rally at MMRDA ground in Mumbai on Sunday was unique for two things. First, the meeting was massive – a sea of people who constantly cheered him till the end. The discipline, the arrangements were just perfect. The next is of course Modi’s speech. His ‘Vote for India’ was indeed emotional but definitely forceful. Here is a Prime Ministerial aspirant who, unlike other political leaders, did not request the people to vote for the BJP. Instead he said four words – Dal Se Bada Desh. Country First. This is what makes Modi different from the rest.

“Vote for India to get freedom from politics of divide, freedom from poverty, improvement in education, employment for youths, safety of women, powerful and prosperous India and for a better India,” said Modi. In these simple words he virtually gave a Congress report card of misrule and mess. Earlier, he blasted the Congress for blatantly pandering to vote-bank politics. “Congress is involved in divide and rule for vote-bank politics. This has been their specialty. They learnt this from Britishers,” Modi said. The attack was timely given the Cabinet nod to sinister Communal Violence Bill.

“The problems we face won’t be solved till we free India from vote-bank politics and get it on path of developmental politics,” he emphasised. Castigating Congress for bad governance, Modi urged the people for a Congress Mukt Bharat – an India without Congress. “Development can happen if intentions are clear. Good governance is the key. Root cause of all problems is bad governance,” he stressed. Making a direct dig at Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi’s “corruption bleeding India” speech at FICCI on Saturday, Modi was at his sarcastic best. “I heard the speech of a big Congress leader on Saturday. He was speaking against corruption. See their audacity. No one else can dare do this. Despite being neck deep in corruption, they spoke against graft with pretentious innocence”, he pointed out.

He also targetted the chatterati by mentioning the presence of tea vendors in VIP lounge of the venue. “The common man is a VIP for us. Times changing”, he said. Criticising the tendency of the Congress-ruled States to censor cable networks to block his public speech; Modi said he had already made it to the hearts of the people. “You can shut televisions but not hearts of the people,” he said. Modi in Mumbai, his first mega rally in western metropolis, would be remembered for the “vote for the country”. And for impending eclipse of the Congress.

Modi at Maha Garjana Rally in Mumbai

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